{"id":22764,"date":"2019-03-15T12:23:55","date_gmt":"2019-03-15T19:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/?p=22764"},"modified":"2022-03-15T04:50:37","modified_gmt":"2022-03-15T11:50:37","slug":"yet-again-we-face-or-dont-the-fearful-symmetry-of-white-supremacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/?p=22764","title":{"rendered":"Yet again, we face, or don\u2019t, the fearful symmetry of white supremacy"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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\"\"<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

March 15, 2019, and the news, once more, is terrible. In Christchurch, New Zealand, 49 Muslim worshippers massacred in the name of white supremacy. Off the coast of Morocco,\u00a045 migrants drowned in the Mediterranean<\/a>. Three years ago,\u00a0all that was human drowned in the sea<\/a>,\u00a0all that was holy had been profaned<\/a>, and we thought, we hoped, we were at last compelled to face with sober senses our real conditions of life, and our relations with our kind.\u00a0Seven years ago, we thought it might be too late to sing songs beyond mankind<\/a>. We thought there had to be songs to sing, and that those songs had to begin by turning swords into ploughshares, immediately, right away. And then we moved on, which is to say we went nowhere.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Today, the news and much of the world is filled with discussions of \u201cwhite supremacy.\u201d The butcher of Christchurch was \u201cdeep\u201d into white supremacist culture. The\u00a0drowned migrants<\/a>, many of them women and children, had to take to the sea because Europe (and the United States and Australia) have declared a \u201cjust war\u201d on migrants of color who are represented as an \u201cinvasion\u201d at the border and in the homeland.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

There are no more songs to sing; even silence fails us, as we fail silence. Here\u2019s how the news from Christchurch was contextualized, \u201cChristchurch, the South Island\u2019s largest city, which is known to have an active white-supremacist subculture<\/a>.\u201d Known to have an active white-supremacist subculture. What kind of knowledge, what kind of knowing, is that which knows and does nothing? White supremacy is hate; white supremacy is a hate crime. It is not a preference; it is a deadly assault always already in motion.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Having survived, at times regretfully, the Holocaust, Paul Celan\u00a0tried, and failed, to turn the pain, horror and anguish of mass violence into the possibility of understanding. Poetry is what emerges from that failure. May it not be too late.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Whichever stone you lift<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Whichever stone you lift \u2013\u00a0
you lay bare\u00a0
those who need the protection of stones:\u00a0
naked,\u00a0
now they renew their entwinement.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Whichever tree you fell \u2013\u00a0
you frame\u00a0
the bedstead where\u00a0
souls are stayed once again,\u00a0
as if this aeon too\u00a0
did not\u00a0
tremble.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Whichever word you speak \u2013\u00a0
you owe to\u00a0
destruction<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

(Image credit: Meditatioprodomo<\/a>)<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

March 15, 2019, and the news, once more, is terrible. In Christchurch, New Zealand, 49 Muslim worshippers massacred in the name of white supremacy. Off the coast of Morocco,\u00a045 migrants drowned in the Mediterranean. Three years ago,\u00a0all that was human drowned in the sea,\u00a0all that was holy had been profaned, and we thought, we hoped, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6329,114,556,4834,5175,1830,1544,5996],"class_list":["post-22764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-christchurch","tag-dan-moshenberg","tag-haunts","tag-mediterranean","tag-morocco","tag-new-zealand","tag-paul-celan","tag-white-supremacy","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22764"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25775,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22764\/revisions\/25775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}